eink

dismal

PlayTV is still a pretty dismal offering considering the capabilities of the PS3 and hasn't seen any significant improvements since release. Why is there any need to "export" to XMB anyway? why isn't it all neatly integrated in the first place? why can't I schedule recordings over the internet?

round and round

Apple reference

There's no mention of Apple in the original article. and the article and statistics are referring specifically to Linux the kernel - not "Linux" the GNU ecosystem.

Original article: "Those figures also don't include companies like Google which rely on Linux-based systems for their own technology, but tend not to contribute code back to the kernel."

Register article: "The likes of Google and Apple were notably absent from Corbet's list as, while both companies use Linux-based systems to build their tech, neither have a tendency to contribute code back to the kernel."

So whilst Apple do indeed use lots of components of the Linux environment and that's a valid point the register article could be discussing it's nothing to do with the kernel which is what this report was referring to.

Trouble with copyright...

@Gordon

It looks like the board is an FPGA to do the decoding wired up to some VGA, network and usb hardware. So pretty much a form of remote KVM with a simple protocol to squirt the display traffic over a network.

@Charles

"when there's a perfectly good one out there."

which *one* are you referring to there? KOffice has always been rather impressive, and quite often a more *interesting* approach to the UI than openoffice which has tended to just be an MSOffice clone. Also KWord includes a text mode akin to the MSOffice draft mode. where's that in openoffice?

"Kids, there's lots of valuable software that still needs writing"

you think kids are the only ones writing open source software? which *valuable* software do you think still needs writing anyway?

@Steven Knox

Because occasionally.... just occasionally you might not be able to be able to use https for some reason and you're prepared to take the risk of using an unsecured connection "just that once" to get at something?

or... perhaps I'm using my gmail account for a non-personal, non-private, non-sensitive, non-secret use and I'm not particularly bothered if the communications are open at all?

Ray guns pah..

Reason?

Does anyone know if there is actually any technical reason why O2 are so piss-poor when it comes to data connections/packages compared to the other operators? Is their infrastructure simply not up to the job?

Hardly surprising

I guess it really just highlights just how technically savvy the Phorm clowns are, that they thought they would be able to get away with this unnoticed.

Will anyone at BT et al now ponder if this glaring lack of technical acumen might perhaps be a sign that the company isn't capable of being trusted with their customers private data after all? Perhaps not.

Trialware...

@hotmail

"Anyway, speaking of Exchange not being suitable for ISPs to run an email server - anyone know what Hotmail runs on?"

Well... there was a big fanfare about them migrating off FreeBSD.... but when the Reg scooped that they'd only migrated the front end servers to IIS and the backend was still all FreeBSD it went all quiet. Perhaps they did migrate it all in the end, but I can't find a decent article about it anywhere. There's a tech-ed piece from 2000 describing the migration (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb496985.aspx)... but that predates the 2001 Register story about it just being the web front end that was moved (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/12/12/microsoft_hotmail_still_runs/).

So no idea what it's on. MS does however try to eat its own dogfood as much as possible (or just buy out someone elses) so I'd be surprised if they weren't using MS software by now.